Category: Culture

Clear Beliefs

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living, Culture, Education, Theology

–September of 1998

Clear Beliefs

One political analyst characterized former President George Bush as “a good man who just couldn’t decide what he believed.” This inability to articulate strongly a set of beliefs enabled the media to paint him as a “wimp” and ultimately took him down to political defeat. It is too bad that the church didn’t learn a valuable lesson from this former president. No one wants to listen to the windy babble of a man who isn’t sure what he believes, while on the other hand people are strongly attracted to the man who can state his opinions and beliefs in clear logical terms. Unfortunately the church is often plagued by leaders who pride themselves on their ability “to almost say something.” Too many leaders seek to cultivate an ambassadorial style of communication that never ruffles anyone’s feathers. Traditionally, the holiness preacher was a man who stood for and stood against some things. You didn’t see him “bellying up” to the bar of consensus and compromise to drink his fill. Convictions were not set aside for the sake of convenience. There were places he refused to go and things he refused to do. He was known and admired for his stand on the issues. Nowadays, however, it has become almost in vogue to consent to a host of general rules and biblical principles with our mouth, only to ignore them with our lives. This duplicity is not only accepted but defended as a way to operate and keep peace.

In fairness to the pulpit, it must also be said that this is a serious problem in the home as well. Parents seem to lack the courage and commitment to communicate forcefully, yet lovingly, to their own children a belief system that will not be compromised under any circumstance.

I’m not suggesting that holiness people need simply to adopt “tough” agendas so as to appear spiritual. That direction is as deceitful as it is deadly. I am saying, however, that if we truly have a belief system grounded in the Word of God it will affect the way we live and lead. Biblical principles form convictions in our lives, and those convictions will become the moral fiber of what we are. What we are and what we believe will ultimately guide and gauge all of our actions. If it doesn’t, then something is critically wrong with our Christian experience. I believe we will have to take stands on issues where the Bible draws a line. The Bible gives us moral laws, standards for ethical behavior, as well as numerous directing principles to guide our daily lives. We cannot give intellectual assent to them and move on with our lives. True holiness demands that we allow the Word of God to impact the totality of our living.

When a culture or civilization goes as far astray as ours, it becomes easy to overlook some things as “not very significant” under the circumstances. However, those insignificant issues can be, and at times are, a first line of defense and, once lost, give way to an onslaught of all other sorts of evil. Attorney David Gibbs observed that… “any church body or denomination always makes changes in lifestyle issues prior to making changes in its theological tenets.” In other words, if we change the way we live, we will necessarily change what we believe. This is a treacherous path to trod. Instead of allowing the ancient faith to stand in judgment on us, we turn and judge the ancient faith. I believe we need to take a firm stand on the desecration of the Lord’s Day, on sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, and abortion, on social sins like using drugs, drinking alcohol, smoking and gambling. We need to warn against immodesty and worldly attire. We need to sound the alarm against the immoral values that are being piped into our homes through the arts and entertainment world. We need to speak up and courageously proclaim that Christians don’t lie, cheat, steal and defraud their neighbor. This is not a time to soft-soap our words. It is not a quiet day in Zion we need, but rather it is an earthquake followed by a thunderstorm from men who will boldly and courageously proclaim “thus saith the Lord.”

I mean to imply that everybody is capitulating. Some time ago Presbyterian leader Dr. D. James Kennedy, thundered to his large congregation, “Some of you are going to leave here and violate the Lord’s Day by eating out in a restaurant.” Jim Cymbala of Brooklyn Tabernacle fame, advises live-in couples to separate and stay that way until they get married if they really want to follow the Lord and be genuine Christians. If these men will be courageous, shouldn’t we as holiness people be clearly voicing and insisting upon a high standard of moral and biblical behavior for our people?

My heart was refreshed when I heard the story of a young man who is enrolling in our college this fall. He was the manager of a large merchandising store in the Southeast. His position commanded a large five digit salary. However, after his conversion he refused to work on Sunday and accepted the consequences of being fired from the position. I also recently learned of an elderly lady in a distant state who lived most of her declining years in near poverty conditions. After her death they found a stack of checks from the state which were to help subsidize her income and make her living more comfortable. However, those checks had not been cashed because that money came from the state lottery, and she felt that the state lottery was wrong. Here is a woman who would rather live in poverty than spend one dime of money that came from the lottery.

How can we, in good conscience, call men and women to revival when we refuse to insist upon reform in both the pulpit and the pew? I believe the biblical portrait for revival always includes and demands both repentance and reform prior to any outpouring of God’s Spirit.

What a man believes is important. You will ultimately live out what you truly believe. As men and women of God within the holiness tradition, we need to start living out what we say we believe.

Let the Lions Defend Themselves

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Culture, Theology

–August of 1996

Let The Lions Defend Themselves

The story is told of a circus train which derailed while passing through the mountainous terrain of West Virginia. As locals gathered to observe the situation, much attention was given to the car which contained the circus lions. These massive beasts, already disturbed by the accident, were being further aggravated by neighboring dogs which were barking snapping at them through the heavy iron bars. The frustrated circus owner, concerned for the welfare of his prized animals, began to cry out, “What can we do to protect the lions?” An amused farmer called back with this bit of practical advice: “Why, mister, you don’t need to protect lions! Just turn them loose, and they’ll protect themselves!”

This story reminds us of the inherent power of the Gospel message, a power that it contains in and of itself. The Gospel needs only an outlet, a channel, someone to “open the door and let it out” in order to demonstrate its native dynamic.

Now to give the full picture, it is admitted that the Christian minister sometimes must adopt a defensive posture. In a society oriented toward doubt and skepticism, it is necessary to employ reason and logic to “protect” Christianity from the “barking dogs of dissent” Whose howls of criticism often dominate the intellectual marketplace. This is the task of apologetics, and it involves the responsibility of proving or defending the Good News. Paul himself declared that he was “set for the defense of the gospel.” Furthermore, Peter admonished his readers to be prepared to defend their faith before those who would inquire about the hope we have in Christ (I Pet. 3:15).

A second aspect of the Christian minister’s responsibility in relationship to the Gospel is that of persuading. Here again Paul acknowledged, “Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.” King Agrippa certainly felt the force of the apostle’s persuasive powers for he candidly admitted, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” This concession, however, didn’t satisfy Paul, and he promptly increased pressure upon Agrippa to be “altogether” persuaded. There certainly is a time and place for the preacher of the Gospel, under divine direction, to bring his hearers tactfully—yet firmly—to a crisis, to a point of decision.

However, to maintain a balanced view of the Great Commission, remember that the Gospel had been best advanced—not by proving or persuading—but simply by proclaiming. This basic methodology is often neglected because it is humbling; it accents the message, not the messenger. It does not depend upon “enticing words of man’s wisdom” but simply upon the Holy Spirit’s power. When angels appeared to astonished shepherds in Bethlehem, they didn’t unfold complex arguments to prove the birth of the Messiah; nor did they come with a high-pressure sales technique to convince their hearers to worship the newborn King. They simply proclaimed the birth of the Saviour and let the wonder and mystique of their message do its own work. The world has not been the same since that day.

So, the next time you are tempted to be discouraged by your inabilities or your want of talent, take heart. The power of the Gospel message does not lie within ourselves; it is inherent in the message itself. The Gospel only needs a channel, someone to open the door and release it. The lion will defend itself.

From the River to the Rhine

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living, Church, Culture, Ministry

–October of 1996

From the River to the Rhine

I grew up in the country. My boyhood days were making memories on a lazy little farm in the Deep South. I was awakened in the morning by the sound or a crowing rooster or a bawling calf. I spent hours walking barefoot behind my father’s plow as he turned up the soft cool earth, readying it for the spring garden. I have played the day away in the gurgling, pristine waters of a forest stream, while birds darted about and squirrels chattered angrily at the sight of an intruder. The grand finale to such a storybook day was when family gathered around the front porch for the evening, each taking his place on a rocking chair on the porch swing.  The cool night breeze would bear the music of a distant whippoorwill, the crickets chirped wildly, while the flickering light of fireflies provided us with our own dazzling fireworks display.  Conversation would gradually begin to be interrupted by yawns, and Mother would give the order that sent us scampering away to bed.

Few outsiders ever invaded our private world.  Anyone driving by on the main thoroughfare in front of our place was most often someone we knew.  Any car turning up our lane caused an immediate rush to the front door or window by inquisitive kids to see who our rare visitors might be.  I grew up in a quiet tranquil world.

I now live in the heart of a bustling metropolis.  The sounds of traffic and commerce fill the air.  People dash about with jobs to perform and deadlines to meet.  Recently while driving off our hilltop campus into the heart of downtown, my heart began to long for the tranquil quietness of my boyhood days, I cried inwardly, “Lord, look at all these people!”  My Heavenly Father quickly responded, “No, you are the one that needs to look.  I see them.”  With the aid of divine illumination, I suddenly began to see more clearly.  I saw the multiplied thousands of people in the inner-city with no one to care for their spiritual needs.  Here are people of every race and class, scurrying about like sheep with no shepherd—abandoned, it seemed, by those who could offer hope and help.

Mission strategists tell us that the inner cities of America have now become one of the largest mission fields of the world.  Yet strangely, the Church—and particularly those within the holiness tradition—has largely abandoned the inner-city.  It has surrendered the high ground of spiritual warfare to poverty, drugs, prostitution and vice of all sorts.  Even the horn and cymbals of the Salvationist street preacher have been traded for a soup ladle and a used clothing store.  Oh, the large mainline churches still stand tall and proud on prominent downtown streets; but they have no ministry to the hopeless or message of holiness for desperate sinners.

The Wesleyan message of saving grace and heart purity saved England in her darkest hour from revolution and turned around one of society’s and civilization’s most festering sores.  Yet the holiness church here in America has not chosen this road of revival and reform for the inner-city, but it has chosen rather to flee the cities and entrench itself in comfortable suburbia.  It now lines the outer beltways of our major metropolises and enjoys a selective evangelism that is more palatable and profitable.  This ecclesiastical escapism has helped to breed the user-friendly church, with plenty of self-help classes but very little agony and anxiety for the lost.

Jesus, however, authenticated his ministry and membership by preaching the gospel to the poor.  He rebuked the righteous by reminding them that he did not come to call them to repentance, but the sinner.  He articulated his mission statement well when he said, “I have come to seek and to save that which is lost.”  This Bible contains over four hundred passages relating to the poor, sixty-four of which command us as believers to help the vulnerable.  Yet holiness people rationalize their own inactivity with a “pessimistic theology” that believes we can’t fix society’s ills.

I’m well aware that the words I write will stir up strong feelings and immediate debate.  The first rebuttal will be that “white flight” and population shifts have forced the church to relocate in the proximity of those who want to identify with the church ministry emphasis.  Another argument is that because of socio-economic reasons, as well as other cultural factors, the blending of the two groups of people is just not possible or even practical.

I fully grasp the significance of each argument and will not take the time in this article to rebut them.  However, what frustrates me is that these groups will parade missionaries from every land and isle to their churches, hear their presentations, cry over the distant lost, and empty their pockets to make sure that sinners ten thousand miles away get the gospel message.  Yet they have no burden and make no plans and feel no responsibility to send a missionary or establish a ministry to and for the most desperately lost people in the world—the people in the inner-city.

This duplicity has even gripped until the Bible college movement until they, too, boast of rural campuses in comfortable suburbia, with plenty of hiking trails, swimming pools, and white-water rafting.  All, of course, within a considerable distance of any poor miserable sinner!  No wonder many graduates ask the potential church congregation about parsonage amenities, salary packages and retirement programs before they ever explore the possibility of reaching the lost.

Did I say that all have abandoned the inner-city?  The Catholics and the cults are still there.  There are also many little store-front ministries, mostly sponsored by the Pentecostals or the Calvinists.  These little hole-in-the-wall churches offer hope and light to those lost in darkness, and to some extent hold back the powers of evil in the inner-city.  Several of those missions here in Cincinnati have been fully operated and staffed by GBS students.  It was my own years spent working in an inner-city mission that created a passion and a drive for evangelizing the lost that has marked my ministry for the last twenty years.

One such mission stands at the north end of Main Street, in a section called “Over the Rhine.”  GBS Alumni will know it as “Main Street Mission.”  Our students have preached from its pulpit, held Good News Clubs for the neighborhood children, preached on its street corners, and passed out gospel tracts all the way down the southern end of Main Street, where it deadends into the riverfront.

Our present pastor, Tom McKnight, works so faithfully with his people for the conversion of souls in his inner-city parish.  Tom is often heard from the pulpit saying, as he challenges his people, “we must reach them from the river to the Rhine.”  Of course, Tom is referring to the southern end of Main Street on the riverfront to the northern end of Main Street in the area of Over the Rhine.  The words and burden of this man have challenged my heart again and again.  Tom is right.  We must reach them.  We must take our cities back for the glory of God and the good of our civilization.

In the first part of this century when the Bible college movement, God called out the Cowmans and sent them to the Orient.  He called out the Smelzenbachs and sent them to Africa, as well as various others around the globe.  But these two couples from the holiness movement made an impact on the world that will never be forgotten.  I’m praying that in the closing part of this century God will once again find a couple like the Cowmans and call them—call them to the inner cities of our own country!  I want God’s Bible School and College to be on the front line, leading the way and giving the support that is necessary to see our inner cities reached.  Tom is right.  From the river to the Rhine, we must reach them!

The Values War

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Culture, Education

—September of 1995

The Values War

Cal Thomas had just finished giving a lecture at the University of Michigan when a student strongly objected to his thesis that our nation needs to promote values rooted in fixed absolutes.  Thomas responded, “If you reject my value system, what do you recommend to replace it?”  The young lady couldn’t answer.  Thomas pressed further by asking, “What is your major?”  “I am a senior, and my major is ethics.”  “On what do you base your own ethics?” Thomas posed.  “I don’t know, and I’m still trying to work that out.”

Here is a typical American student who has spent sixteen years in public education at the cost of $100,000 only to be left unable to think.  She had been given no moral foundation for right or wrong.  She had been stripped of a belief in the Bible and even taught an antagonism toward values founded on Scripture.  Her moral compass had been completely destroyed.  Consequently, she had no way of finding true north in a moral sense.

This young person, like thousands of others, was left to operate in an ethical and moral wasteland as a result of her training in America’s educational institutions.  The educational elite of these schools have deliberately eroded traditional education rooted in 2,000 years of Western civilization and undergirded by Judeo-Christian ethics.  They have spent the last forty years on a determined campaign to secularize our society through its young people.  They have established and politicized curricula centered in multiculturalism and held up by subjective standards void of moral absolutes.  A common core of knowledge has been replaced by a smorgasbord of relativism.  These graduates are then thrust into America’s marketplace and expected to do what is right.  However, the daily news echoes shocks and horror, bombings, fraud, incest, murder, and “wickedness in high places.”

Should we really be shocked by an Oklahoma bombing?  Should we shake our head in disbelief when mothers drown their children, and when fraud and deceit are daily occurrences in public life?  When incest, adultery and divorce come home to haunt us?  What else should we expect when we strip the moral values out of our educational system?  C.S. Lewis expressed it this way, “We laugh at honor and then are shocked to find traitors in our midst.  We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”  Has the “dumbing down” of America affected even us to the point that we honestly believe we can place our youth under the influence of today’s public educators and have them still committed to the values and traditions that we hold dear?

The most serious war being fought today is the war of values.  The church and our nation cannot afford to lose.  Our survival as a country as well as Western civilization hangs on the outcome.  The end result will determine whether it is a revival of religion we seek or whether we must start over and evangelize a heathen country.  I am praying for and promoting revival.  I believe God is beckoning to us through His Word for such a revival.  I believe God is beckoning to us through His Word for such a revival.  However, ears that are morally deaf cannot hear the message of revival but must be evangelized by the Gospel.

The Bible college is now on the front line of this struggle.  The role that we play will have an important part in the outcome.  Unfortunately, many have capitulated and are serving up the same secularistic menu that has left thousands of others void of moral nourishment.  We must embrace with renewed conviction our belief that education based on biblical truth is the only true education, and that this education must assist us in acquiring virtuous habits and ridding ourselves of nonvirtuous ones.  We must take from the center stage the question, “How shall I make a living?” and place there the question, “How shall I live?”  Our success in graduating a core of students who embrace the moral truths of God’s Word and whose lives possess a discipline and self-restraint will determine the future of our precious church and country.  The outcome of today’s values war will determine whether we pray for God to send us revival or pray for God to send us missionaries.

Developing a Theology of Change

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Church, Culture, Ministry

–March 0f 2009

Developing a Theology of Change

Continual change is the reality of our time.  Globalism and consumer demands have forced business to “change or die.”  Social norms keep shifting.  Even our most time-honored institutions have to be innovative at a breath-taking pace to remain relevant to the world they seek to serve.  Not only are we changing but the rate at which we are changing continues to accelerate.   More change took place in the latter half of the twentieth century than has occurred since the founding of our nation.  The twenty-first century has already ushered in major transformations as post-modernism places its world-view on every aspect of the emerging culture.

The church is not an isolated island from the rest of society and by its very nature it cannot be. It too is changing. As a matter of fact, change is not new to the church.  One only has to read the book of Acts and subsequent church history to see the church changing to meet the challenges of its day.  For those of us within the holiness tradition, John Wesley and the early Methodists serve as an example of innovation at its best.  After Wesley’s own spiritual awakening, he realized that the vast majority of unsaved souls refused to enter the doors of an Anglican Church.  Unwilling that people should perish in their sins he took the gospel message to the coal mines and open fields of England.  Despite bitter opposition from the clergy, Wesley became an open air preacher.  For the sake of souls Wesley was willing to change the norm and engage in a practice that even he disliked.  He commented, “to this day field preaching is a cross to me, but I know my commission and see no other way of preaching the gospel to every creature”.

As Methodism took root in Great Britain, Wesley was faced with a growing number of societies that had no ordained preacher. His solution was to create a band of itinerant laymen to serve them.  In answering a necessity by innovation, he formed one of the great features of Methodism that was, without doubt, pivotal to its success.  Mind you, his decision to break with tradition and do something different brought disfavor and persecution from the Anglican Church.  Furthermore, Wesley’s approach to spiritual formation through the class and band meetings was not only innovative but also highly effective – so much so that it still serves as the model for small group ministries today.

When Methodism came to America, Francis Asbury was commissioned by Wesley to “offer Christ” to all the people of this new frontier.  To reach such a sparse population in a vast untamed wilderness seemed impossible. But Francis Asbury created a small army of saddlebag preachers whose horseback mobility enabled them to evangelize and disciple every soul whether they lived in the largest settlement or the most remote wilderness cabin.  The Circuit Rider became a model of innovation that grew the American Methodist church from fewer than 15,000 members, 43 circuits, and 83 itinerants in 1784 to a denomination of 1,069,000 members, 4,000 circuit riders, and more than 7,000 local preachers by 1844.

Methodism’s willingness to be innovative helped them to capitalize on the novel idea of campmeetings.  Started by the Presbyterians as sacramental meetings, the Methodists took them over and made them a “battleaxe and weapon of war” to reach lost souls for almost a century.  When the campmeeting ceased to draw large crowds of sinners, the Methodists used them to promote the message of holiness among believers for another half century.  The National Campmeeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness swept the country impacting every branch of Methodism as well as many Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Baptists. Thousands were brought into an experience of heart holiness.  This happened because leadership was willing to shift gears and capitalize on the hunger for something deeper in the religious culture of the day.

Spirit filled saints have always been innovative and open to change.  Charles Finney was criticized for “new innovations” because in his protracted meetings he used the “anxious seat and mourners bench” to revive the church and evangelize the lost.  D.L. Moody used his organizing genius and Billy Sunday his dynamic preaching style to attract thousands to their evangelistic rallies. Even the Sunday School was an innovative idea, looked upon with skepticism by the established church, but eventually embraced and institutionalized.  It became an effective means of catechizing believers as well as serving as an entry point for unchurched people.

Martin Wells Knapp and others used small cheap booklets, lithograph preaching diagrams and the magic lantern (a forerunner of the slide projector) to captivate the mind and win the battle for souls. Meredith Standley was consumed with a passion to reach the lost and saw an opportunity to mobilize an army of “Gods Issues” at the close of WWII.  The GI Bill brought veterans to campus and the large surplus of army jeeps and trailers provided the necessary equipment to start the “GI’s of the Cross.” This unique means of outreach enlisted hundreds in its ranks and was responsible for the conversion of souls in numerous small towns across America. A willingness to ride the wave of present opportunity, to adopt new technology or to try something different has been crucial to finding many new and effective methods for winning souls to Christ.

Yet today, the sons and daughters of these innovative saints have retreated into our fortresses and pulled up our drawbridges in an attempt to avoid change and innovation of any sort.  It’s so bad in some places that to even suggest a new idea brings considerable pain to the powers that be!  Why?  Resistance to change is natural. There is a natural tendency to hold on to the things of the past.  The older one gets, the more one tends to cling to the familiar, comfortable and predictable ways of “happier days” gone by.  Resistance to change is especially true for religious institutions.  It can even be a good thing if it prevents a group from being swept up in every passing fade or infected by doctrinal heresy. And many of the cultural changes we see bring deeper depravity and greater evil. But we too often refuse to do the hard work of distinguishing between good change and bad change. Such a refusal to evaluate and accept – even embrace – appropriate and reasonable change leads only to a closed system which stifles new ideas and new life.  Someone has said that the only two kinds of people you need to fear are those who want to change everything and those who want to change nothing.

So every church should face the difficult question of what must and must not change. Every church has to do the difficult and fragile work of understanding change, learning to live with it and developing ways to use it to their advantage in ministry.  Appropriate change must and can be made safely if a church takes the time to develop a theology of change.  A theology of change is a well designed process that leads change in an orderly, healthy and appropriate way. A good theology of change consists of at least four elements.

 1.  A Theology of Change first establishes what is unchangeable.

 A theology of change cannot be developed in a vacuum; it requires context.  The mission and core values of the church provide that context. A clear, concise statement that defines what the church is supposed to be doing has to be in place and understood before one can talk about change.  Change cannot begin until one knows exactly what it is one cannot change.  The mission of the church has been laid out in holy orders by Christ Himself.  In brief, terse terms the Church is to “make and mature disciples.”  Any attempt to make the purpose of the church anything else is treason! A clear mission statement allows us to reevaluate our actions and priorities to make sure they are subservient to the mission. If they are not, then change begins with our actions and priorities. But the mission of the church is unchangeable.

Core values are the church’s shared Biblical convictions and beliefs. They feed the passion and drive the action of the church’s mission. They represent the conscience and collective soul of the church because they express the church’s most deeply held values. It is impossible for a church to do ministry that matters until it knows what really matters.  A church that doesn’t have a clear set of core values is like a river without banks. It will run in every direction and miss the opportunity to advance its cause with whitewater speed and precision.  Core values aligned with scripture are also unchangeable.

Wesley could make significant changes to the status quo of institutionalized religion without compromising the faith or grieving the Spirit that was blessing his efforts because he understood both the mission and the core values of the church. Understanding both is crucial for making changes today. The most effective churches or church movements are those who have a clear mission and a set of core values that undergird and guide the implementation of that mission.  Change that ignores the church’s purpose and values causes the church to begin the sad journey of identity loss and ultimate death. Methodism provides an example of that in the late ninetieth century.  To fail in having a biblically centered mission with missional values is to waste your time, dissipate valuable resources and fail at being the church.  A theology of change insists first on a biblical mission and values.

 2. A Theology of Change helps us to understand the difference between Function, Form and Tradition

 A sound theology of change requires that we know the difference between the church’s Biblical mandates and her methods.  Stated another way, one must know the difference between function and form.  Aubrey Malphurs defines the functions of the church as the timeless, unchanging and nonnegotiable precepts that are based on Scripture and are mandates for all churches to pursue to accomplish their purpose.  Most would accept that the general functions of the Church include: preaching/teaching, fellowship, worship, evangelism and service.  All of these functions enable the church to fulfill her purpose of making and maturing disciples into the image of Christ. All are mandated and modeled in scripture.  To tamper with these is to tamper with our identity as a church. To leave them behind or lay them aside is to cease to be a church.

Forms, on the other hand, are the temporal and changing practices of the church that are based on culture or tradition.  They are methods that all churches are free to choose to accomplish their Biblically mandated functions. Forms tend to have a limited time of usefulness and by their very nature have to be replaced with new ones as contexts change.

Traditions are forms or practices that have been handed down from generation to generation and are seen as still effective in helping the church carry out her God given functions.  Traditions help to create a certain amount of identity, familiarity and continuity all of which are central to healthy worship.

Change can pose a problem in two opposite extremes: when forms are institutionalized and elevated to the place of functions or when functions are trivialized and demoted to the category of forms. A solid theology of change prevents this from happening and allows the church to be relevant to its day while being faithful to its scriptural mandates and values.  The church’s functions must never change, but forms or methods will and should change from time to time. The same is true with tradition.  Tradition cannot be elevated to the place of scripture, nor must it be perpetually embraced just because it has been around a long time and institutionalized.  Traditions and forms are valuable as long as they enable the church to fulfill its primary functions: if they no longer contribute to mission fulfillment, they lose their purpose and worth.

For instance, worship is a function of the church.  We can’t be a church and not worship.  Congregational singing is a traditional part of worship.  It would be very difficult to imagine a church where song was not a part of the worship experience.  But what and how we sing is a form or practice determined by propriety and preference. Our values require that what we sing be to the glory of God and to the spiritual edification of those present.  But whether we sing the words out of a hymn book or from a screen, while accompanied by a piano, or organ, or key board, or guitar, or sound track —these are not moral or functional issues, but matters of congregational or cultural preference. Whether the words we sing are Charles Wesley’s, Bill Gaither’s or Steve Green’s is not the real issue. The goal, the function, is to worship in Spirit and Truth.  The method or form we use is the one that helps us accomplish that goal best.

Another example of a form is the time when we worship. The time of a worship service is an issue to be decided in a manner that is best for the congregation.  For instance, the time that we traditionally worship in America is around 11:00 a.m. This time was set when America was mostly rural to accommodate farmers as well as give people time to reach the church by means of a horse and buggy.  Before the advent of indoor lighting, services were generally held only once on Sunday.  With the invention of electric lights, city churches started evening services to give people a more wholesome activity for their Sunday nights. The time of worship is not what is sacred or unchangeable – but meeting together for worship is!

Where we worship is negotiable as well.    A fundamental, unalterable part of worship is the fellowship and accountability of other believers.  But that doesn’t mean one has to worship in a large church equipped with a steeple and stained glass. One can worship in a store front, a house church or a warehouse with none of the typical aesthetics of a church.  Nor does it mean that I must be surrounded by a multitude of people.  It some cases two or three believers meet in a home and worship with distant congregations by means of internet streaming in order to have acceptable doctrinal teaching and preaching. Whether we worship while sitting in a pew or a chair, are taught by a pastor who stands behind an ornate pulpit or a simple music stand and fellowship with other believers in a building that looks like a cathedral or a warehouse all makes no difference whatsoever.  The forms, props and methods are only as valuable as they aid us in fulfilling the great mandates of the church.  Idolaters worship forms – saints worship God!

3. A Theology of Change doesn’t fixate on the present and ignore the past.

Some are so anxious to change the present that they ignore the valuable contributions and warnings from earlier generations.  When this happens a repetition of past failures and old heresies is likely.  History is a treasure trove of insights and answers for the problems we face today. Real change for the future comes through a careful understanding of the past.

4.  A Theology of Change addresses the issue of cultural relevance with neither isolation nor accommodation.

 Isolationists believe incorrectly that the surrounding culture is inherently evil and that the church needs to stay as far away from it as possible.  Though it is true that our culture has many things that are rotten to the core, it is also true that our culture has many good things that are intrinsic to who we are.

Accommodation is the opposite extreme from isolation. It wants to fully embrace or adopt our culture. Accommodation has both a liberal and conservative side. The liberal side believes that the present culture is a friend of the gospel and we must accommodate its extreme views of evolution, homosexuality and abortion. The liberals lean over so far to speak to the present culture that they fall in bed with them and end up denying the faith.  The conservative side of accommodation argues that God endorses a particular culture as distinctly Christian.  The Amish are an example of this.  They believe that God endorses the culture of the 1800’s so they model the culture of that day.  Other Christians believe that God only endorses Western culture within their particular religious context. This is primarily seen in the exportation of Western ways in missionary enterprise.

A good theology of change recognizes the need to have enough cultural relevance so as to communicate the gospel to the age it seeks to win.  Cultural relevance is not found in succumbing blindly to worldly practices, but it is found in understanding a culture well enough to articulate the gospel in a way understandable to the people of that culture.

Change is a constant.  Resistance to change is also a constant.  As Christians, we need to seek the wisdom from above that allows us to lead the church through the changes that do and will come without succumbing to the extremes of changing everything or changing nothing. Positive change is what the church is about.  We seek to change lives by the two greatest changes agents known to man: God’s Word and Grace.  A theology of change will keep us from tampering with the mission, values and functions of the church.  But it will allow us freedom to use whatever forms we believe necessary and helpful in fulfilling our role as the Body of Christ on earth.